Eggses…

Restaurants… breakfast food… conditioning.  And that’s what it really is is conditioning.  There’s no other logical reasoning.  Pro-tip for restaurants:  Not everybody likes eggs.

• Go to McDonald’s (or almost any fast food restaurant) and almost all options include eggs of some sort.  McDonald’s even recently rolled out all-day breakfasts.  Why is it so hard to to have a burger option or two for the rest of us?  Doesn’t have to be the entire menu, but a couple basic options would be appreciated.
• Go to almost any sit-down restaurant and pretty much every combo option involving pancakes or french toast also includes eggs.  And this is one area where they are loathe to consider substitutions.  Sure, I can order ala carte, but then I’m paying inordinately more for my meal.

Eggses, by themselves, are nasty!  The notion of cutting up a lone fried egg and eating it alone is nauseating to me.  Scrambled eggs, by themselves, need to be covered in ketchup… which says all that needs to be said regarding them.  Now, I’m not wholly anti-egg.  I will eat them in certain scenarios…

• Omelettes:  Eggs in the form of an omelette are quite tasty.  Being combined with the other ingredients is what makes an omelette tasty.
• Over-easy eggs mixed in with harsh brown potatoes:  Not “American fries”, but hash browns.  Put the over-easy eggs on top, and cut them up and mix them in.  (Mix in some link sausage, too, and it makes a nice meal.)  This is something my Dad learned in the Air Force in the 1950s, and was something he taught my sister and myself, and is the only way that I actually like over-easy eggs.  The whites must be trimmed away as much as possible, too.  Egg whites are tasteless.
• Hard-fried egg sandwich:  This is kind of an exception.  A hard fried egg on toast.  With or without meat and cheese, depending on my mood.  Mayo is required.  Usually salt, too.  A scrambled egg makes a mice sandwich, too… no ketchup necessary.
• Over-easy cut up on toast:  About once a year.
• Oh, and poached as part of an Eggs Benedict is a nice change of pace, as well.  (A local restaurant here that I like stopped making poached and tries to pass off scrambled for Eggs Benedict.  Blasphemy!)

Those are about the only way I will do eggs.  Hard boiled/Deviled Eggs?  *Gag!!!*  Raw in a ‘healthy’ drink?  Do you really want to clean your shoes?  My list of what is acceptable doesn’t seem so bad, but if you have caught the common theme so far is that they must be “doctored” to some degree, and/or combined with something else, to be palatable.

Bottom line:  People only eat “breakfast foods” at breakfast because they’ve been conditioned to do so.  Someone told them that’s the way it’s supposed to be as a kid, and like a good little soldier fell into line and repeated that mantra for the rest of their life.  A good burger for breakfast is perfectly fine, quite tasty in fact, and restaurants especially need to suck less and do better to accommodate us non-egg people.